Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!mcgill-vision!snorkelwacker!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ncar!mephisto!psuvax1!news From: ehrlich@cs.psu.edu (Dan &) Newsgroups: comp.unix.aix Subject: Re: How do you get a 6000 to boot the equivalent of single user? Message-ID: Date: 9 Aug 90 19:19:22 GMT References: <10600@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> Sender: news@cs.psu.edu (Usenet) Organization: Computer Science Department, Penn State University Lines: 42 In-Reply-To: schinder@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu's message of 31 Jul 90 19:03:40 GMT Nntp-Posting-Host: colossus.cs.psu.edu In article <10600@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> schinder@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Paul Schinder) writes: Paul> [While I'm waiting for a phone call from IBM, I thought I might Paul> try here] Paul> We have a PowerStation 320, running AIX 3.1, which started acting up Paul> last night by refusing to boot, and the console remains dark with no Paul> information. The initial reboot was done by a "shutdown -r"; when I Paul> realized later that the machine hadn't rebooted, I found it showing a Paul> three digit code "c99". After several attempts to boot it, I loaded Paul> standalone diagnostics from the floppies. The hardware all checked Paul> out. Now when we try to boot it, the code is "553", which according Paul> to a previous phone call from IBM means the inittab file is bad. Paul> (Neither "c99" or "553" is in any of the documentation we have). Paul> We have AIX on tape, but unfortunately our tape drive hasn't arrived Paul> yet. We don't have AIX floppies. So there seems to be no other way Paul> for us to boot AIX except from the preinstalled version on the hard Paul> disk. The man pages I've read seem to indicate that if booted in Paul> maintainence mode, the inittab is ignored, but they don't say how Paul> to boot in maintainence mode. Paul> So *is* there an equivalent of single user mode on these machines? Paul> How do you get it to come up that way? And why is the console off so Paul> far into the boot; how can you tell how the boot in going if the Paul> console doesn't display any messages? Did you get an answer from IBM? I asked my SE the same question and did not really get an answer. Do you have the installation floppies? I vaguely remember something like the following: You boot up the floppies as if you were going to install from tape. When you get to the first menu you drop into a shell. Then run /etc/continue. It is not quite 'single user' in the real UNIX sense. I think that you are still running out of the memory resident version of the / file system at this point. Not sure if you can mount your file systems, etc. -- Dan Ehrlich /Voice: +1 814 863 1142/FAX: +1 814 865 3176